K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences

Two unusual signs

Either someone is baiting me, or the tide has turned and the command line is regaining some prominence. Of course it probably never lost much prominence to start with, just suffered a little bad-mouthing, which no one ever died from.

But any time I spot two threads in the same day in the Ubuntu Forums — the Ubuntu forums mind you, where you’re more likely to meet complaints about the CLI than a notes of support for it — that poll its popularity or ask about X-less systems, then something is afoot.

There’s not a lot to be gleaned from a terrifically unscientific poll of command-line use, or a random callout for anyone running without X. In fact, had they occurred anywhere else — the Arch Forums, for example, or even the Debian forums — and you could probably safely overlook them altogether.

Arch Linux users, after all, are notorious command-line freaks who boast of their keyboarding prowess with screenshots of bizarre window managers like xmonad and Musca. And the elite of the elite of Debian peer down through the clouds that surround their aeries and wonder why you’re still using a mouse. Is your keyboard broken, perhaps?

I kid. I know it’s unusual to find an Ubuntu user who veers clear of X, since stripping away most of the graphical element of Ubuntu is stripping away most of Ubuntu … meaning that what’s left resembles other distros more than it resembles Ubuntu. You could call that the common denominator between all Linux systems, and it would be a warm, happy moment. :roll:

But … all things being equal, it’s nice to see some recognition of the command line, with a large percentage of that aforementioned terrifically unscientific poll going toward “daily use.” And it’s nice to hear about a few other people, in the midst of so many Ubuntu devotees, voicing a preference for such a large chunk of it omitted.

6 thoughts on “Two unusual signs”

Even in Ubuntu, most of the guidance to n00bs usually includes CLI based fixes, because that is the common denominator between GNOME based Ubuntu, KDE based Kubuntu, XFCE based Xubuntu and the other GUIs which can run on the base Ubuntu distribution. With the freedom to customize which Linux fosters, telling them to ‘look under the Applications Menu > Internet > . . .’ may result in even more confusion than trying to guide a Windows novice using Windows 7 when you are using an old Windows XP SP2 box.

Just a small anecdote: since I started ‘brewing’ Ubuntu at home, I found myself more and more using batch scripts and other command line tools in Windows as well (which I do -have to- use for work).
I guess Linux purists will frown, but in my (probably too simple) mind, that means putting a Linux touch in Windows.
I’m typically a GUI guy, but there are some things that are just way quicker with CLI: then why not using it?